Big weekend approaching

Over the course of the next few weeks, the International Year of Astronomy gets into gear. Here’s a few things to pop into your calendar. Note the biggest day to remember, a day when things both finish and start is March 28th – this coming Saturday.

MoonWatch

The Society for Popular Astronomy free Telescopes for Schools are arriving in the grubby hands of schoolchildren up and down the country in anticipation of the Spring part of the Moon Watch. Local astronomical societies, including several in the south, such as Ruislip (on the 28,29th of March and 3,4th of April), as well as our own Eddington Society in Kendal (3rd of April, 7:30pm, the Brewery Arts Centre), are holding public observation events during the course of this. See your own local astronomical society for details of what they will be doing.

The Spring Moon Watch week lasts from the 28th of March until the 5th of April.

The Eddington Society Moon Watch is on the 3rd of April.

100 hours of astronomy

Next week all over the world, there will be one hundred entire hours within which astronomical public observations are made. Some societies such as the Eddington Society have combined this with the Moon Watch to participate in both events. Go to the website for more details of happenings in your area – it might be an astronomical society, a guy with a telescope and some spare time, anything.

100 hours of astronomy occur between the 2-5th of April, next week.

Earth Hour

Even as the GLOBE at night light pollution monitoring event comes to an end on March 28th (go to the website to learn how to make, record and report your own observations of Orion – presently in the South-East after sunset, if you haven’t already). But never fear, as one light goes out another comes on (or should that be the thing we do fear?) – Earth Hour, supported by London Mayor Boris Johnson amongst many, many others, will shut down the planet’s lights (or a small fraction of them) at 8:30pm local time on that day.

So remember, astronomy is out there for free all over the world over the next week or so. Get the word out or get yourself over an eyepiece – and just one more reminder for those members of the Eddington Society out there…